Children's food consumption is related to their current and future health, including body fatness and bone mass. Both obesity and osteoporosis are recognized as diseases with childhood origins. Indeed, childhood adiposity and bone mass measures have been shown to be strongly associated with adulthood adiposity and bone mass measures. Studies such as the proposed- with careful and frequent measurement of dietary intake, adiposity, and bone mass- are needed to adequately characterize the relation between dietary intake and fat and bone mass during growth. We will use longitudinal data in a repeated measures analysis of adiposity and bone mass in relation to dietary intake in children during the 3 to 7 y age period. Furthermore, dietary patterns that characterize food intakes in terms of the total diet rather than single nutrients, in relation to adiposity and bone mass, have not been identified. A nutritional epidemiological method (reduced rank regression, RRR) that identifies dietary patterns that are associated with multiple health outcomes simultaneously recently was described. We will use the novel RRR method to identify patterns of food intake that are associated with adiposity and bone mass during the 3 to 7 y age period. Findings from these RRR analyses will complement those from the repeated measures analyses, thereby allowing us to fully elicit the valuable information contained in the rich data set. The richness of our data is striking, as 3 -day food records and precise measures of body fat and bone mass were collected every 4 mo from age 3 to 7 y. Notably, we will be able to effectively control for physical activity, a known determinant of dietary intake, adiposity, and bone mass, because we have physical activity and sedentary behavior data collected every 4 mo by self-report and accelerometer. We also will be able to account for other factors known or assumed to be related to adiposity and bone mass, including age, sex, race, parent education level, and mother's BMI. This study is novel because there are no other studies in children that included measures of food intake, physical activity, adiposity, and bone mass collected prospectively at multiple, closely spaced time points. We will use an innovative statistical approach, first applied in nutritional epidemiology in 2004, to define dietary patterns that are simultaneously related to adiposity and bone mass during the 3 to 7-y age period. The long term goal is to define patterns of dietary intake in young children that lead to decreases in the prevalence of obesity and low bone mass throughout the life span. Our findings will go beyond a simple description of dietary patterns in young children; they will have implications for designing intervention studies on the effect of the total diet on adiposity and bone mass. The ultimate objective is to aid in the development of dietary recommendations for children that promote low adiposity and high bone mass. We expect to show what constitutes a "total diet" that is related to both adiposity and bone mass in children during the 3 to 7 year age period. Our findings will be interpreted in terms of USDA Food Guide Pyramid food groupings and will have implications for designing intervention trials on the effect of diet on adiposity and bone mass in young children. This research will inform decisions on dietary recommendations for children. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]